Portside

War veteran Fred Norman devotes his writing to Peace. His mantra: Each night I ask myself/what did I do today/to end the wars?//If I answer back with/"Nothing"/then the dead that day/are mine.//I beg of them forgiveness.

TPP's fate in congress is uncertain at best; Long-awaited text reveals gaps between administration claims and actual TPP terms on key congressional, public concerns. Many in Congress said they would support the TPP only if, at a minimum, it included past reforms made to trade pact intellectual property rules affecting access to affordable medicines. But the TPP rolls back that past progress and provides pharmaceutical firms with new monopoly rights for biotech drugs.

A large majority of Americans, 68 percent, in a recent ABC/Washington Post poll said our economic system favors the rich rather than the majority. About half of those who said they were Republicans agreed. Economist Joseph Stiglitz has been following opinion research and consistently found that the percentages of those who see too much wealth inequality were high among men and women, Democrats and Republicans, people with lower incomes, even those with higher incomes.

The assault at Spring Valley runs deeper than one bad cop - it's the latest product of the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the last 20 years there has been an explosion in the number of police officers stationed in schools. This has been one of the most dramatic and clearly counterproductive expansions of police scope and power in postwar America.

There are concerns that Israel will now exert pressure on other allies, including America, Canada and Britain, to use state machinery and legislation to outlaw the growing BDS movement. It is high time, therefore, to expose the French action for what it is in an effort to deter such moves. 'Libert,, ,galit,, fraternit,' are all well and good; but now we must add "hypocrisie" and France should hang its head in shame.

Reader Comments: Black Futures, #BlackLivesMatter - Not More Cops; Harry Belafonte on Activism; Socialism - Making a Comeback; Building a Left Movement and the Sanders campaign; Mideast War Escalation - Syria; Wealth Data and U.S. Economic Inequality; China Pivot; Okinawa Missiles, Cuba and Nuclear War; Israel; 2016 elections, primaries and the military budget; satirical articles on Portside

In any case, union contracts and the working conditions they codify are the current compromise between labor and capital in any given workplace. With or without a contract, workers will have to struggle. Staughton Lynd doesn't seem to consider the possibility that some workers may not be looking for constant class warfare on the job, and that settling a decent contract offers a much needed respite to lock-in gains.

Sometimes I hear dangerous conversations from progressives. They tell me the days of collective bargaining are over, and we've got to find another formula. Yes, we should find other formulas, but I don't want to lose the bread and butter of workers leading their own organizations. That's why you see a lot of union workers on the street. They come through their organizations. They know it's their organization, their union.

Since the start of October, Palestinians have been taking part in mass popular resistance against Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid.

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (available to order with a donation to Truthout) brings together trans, queer and gender nonconforming views on police and prisons. Its pages brim with anger, grief, hope, humor and daring, taking on everything from bathhouse raids to capitalism, from prison rape to sex offender registries.